


For Such the Angels Go

by unwhithered



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Mourning, how do clones grieve when the loss is constant, original character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 07:05:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7791631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwhithered/pseuds/unwhithered
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someday this wall may be the only thing that remembers him, like so many forgotten brothers that died in foxholes and minefields and cramped city streets. Bodies that were never recovered, funerals that were never held, because that honor is reserved for real men, ones not raised for the sole purpose of dying in defense of the Republic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Such the Angels Go

On every Republic battle cruiser, there is a wall much like the one Fives stands in front of now. _The Resolute_ ’s takes up the back half of the main locker room, and he knows that on the _Negotiator_ the starboard wall of the mess is covered in the same chicken-scratch of a hundred different trooper’s messy scrawl. Some of it is barely readable - writing by hand had not been a skill considered particularly necessary by the Kaminoans, though every trooper can speak and read a half-dozen galactic languages, and hold a rudimentary conversation in another handful.

This particular wall is covered by blue pens and paint, each name and number painstakingly spelled out even when the lines are crooked or shaky. He reads them all, from start to finish, the names of brothers that lived and died on the battlefield before his squad ever left Kamino - Tiny, Bruiser, Lockstep and a hundred more - and the more recent additions of men he has slept and laughed and bled and fought beside. Hevy, Jacks, Lucky. Ninety-Nine, written in big bold letters by Echo’s shaking hand. When he reaches Echo’s name, in his own curved handwriting, his heart clenches and his fingers stretch out to brush the cold metal that memorializes the last member of his squad. Someday this wall may be the only thing that remembers him, like so many forgotten brothers that died in foxholes and minefields and cramped city streets. Bodies that were never recovered, funerals that were never held, because that honor is reserved for real men, ones not raised for the sole purpose of dying in defense of the Republic.

Fives saw one, once, on Coruscant. The body of an Admiral had been covered in shimmering cloth, and a Senator had spoken about bravery and sacrifice before a ceremonial round of gunfire cut through the constant noise of city life and the body was carried away on the shoulders of six members of the Senate guard. He hadn’t felt envy. For a clone, there is nothing more honorable than to be remembered by his brothers, to have his name murmured over a round of drinks and then marked out reverently on this wall for all to see every time they train for battle.

Tonight, members of the 501st will filter in and out to add the names of brothers that fell on the planet they still orbit. The planet that so many sacrificed their lives to free, whose name Fives cannot even remember.

This morning he is alone, still outfitted in dented and burnt armor that smells like mud and death and sewage. Still wearing his helmet, with another soldier’s bucket tucked under his left arm, and a bottle of orange paint used for marking out landing zones clutched in his right hand. With their ships destroyed and their battalion wiped out to the last man, there is no one left to memorialize the 108th. Nobody but him, clutching a stranger’s helmet, which bears the last video evidence of the existence of 500 men left to rot in marshes and hilltops and fields. 

It will take him hours to paint their names and numbers, one by one in their distinctive orange, on the blank canvas of a corner wall. But he had promised a dying brother, clutching his hand while death rattled in his crushed chest. _Commander Canon_ , he paints first, in broad strokes, followed by five hundred others and ended with the name of the Jedi General who had died while deflecting blaster fire away from her last handful of loyal soldiers. She’s worthy of her place there.

He hopes, tiredly, that he will never live to write _Commander Ahsoka Tano_ or _General Anakin Skywalker_ in blue beside his brothers, but hope is futile in war.

**Author's Note:**

> Since I started watching The Clone Wars I've been super interested in how the clones, particularly the 501st, function on a day to day basis while not in battle. What are their lives on board like. What kind of culture and interpersonal relationships they've really constructed for themselves and how they cope with such overwhelming losses so frequently. What kind of idiosyncrasies develop between the various companies.
> 
> In this case, how a form of mourning and memorializing their massive losses spans the galaxy and is carefully passed down so that no one is ever really forgotten or erased.


End file.
